Front Burner - Is Canada's Arctic sovereignty in danger?

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

U.S. President Trump has been talking about wanting to gain control of Greenland, and expand American influence in the Arctic.It’s a region rich in minerals and oil. It’s also an important potential trade route being opened up by climate change.  The U.S. is reportedly in talks with Russia about possible collaboration on energy projects there.This has a lot of people in Canada – from Northern premiers, federal politicians, and members of Canada’s military – worried about our country’s sovereignty and security.David Pugliese is the longtime military and defence reporter for the Ottawa Citizen. He explains why the Arctic is both so valuable and vulnerable, whether the region’s sovereignty is at risk, and what Canada could do about it.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In Scarborough, there's this fire behind our eyes. A passion in our bellies. It's in the hearts of our neighbors. The eyes of our nurses. And the hands of our doctors. It's what makes Scarborough, Scarborough. In our hospitals, we do more than anyone thought possible. We've less than anyone could imagine.

But it's time to imagine what we can do with more. Join Scarborough Health Network and together, we can turn grit into greatness. Donate at lovescarborough.ca. This is a CBC podcast. Hi, I'm JB Prosser. So we have been spending time on the show lately trying to understand what is motivating Trump and his administration when it comes to foreign policy. Last week we talked about why access to critical minerals could explain, at least in part,

his interests in Greenland and Canada, and his interest in signing a minerals deal with Ukraine. Another thing that Trump has been talking about is wanting to expand American influence in the Arctic, a region where there are minerals, but also oil, fish, and an important potential trade route being opened up by climate change. Greenland is up there, and of course, so are we. And this has a lot of people in Canada from Northern Premiers, Federal politicians and members of Canada's military

worried about our country's sovereignty and security in the region. The US is reportedly in talks with Russia right now about possible collaboration on energy projects there. So is our country's Arctic sovereignty and security in danger right now? What makes this region so valuable and vulnerable? And what can Canada do about it? David Puglase is here to answer all of those questions and more. He is the longtime military and defense reporter at the Ottawa Citizen. David, hi, it's great to have you back on the show. Oh, great to be here. Thank you. So I know that you've actually spent some time with the Canadian military in the Arctic.

Where did you go? And just tell me what it was like there. So I did two trips to the Arctic. Where did you go and just tell me what it was like there? So I did two trips to the Arctic. The one in March 2018 was a lot longer. So we're in Resolute Bay, Cambridge Bay. And the other one was a year earlier where I was watching a parachute drop in the middle of the night over the Arctic involving both Canadian and US paratroopers. And both times you get the sense of operating in the Arctic is like operating on the far side of the moon. You know, it was minus temperatures at Resolute Bay dropped to minus 70. Um, you know, during the day they hover at minus 40, uh, your skin, you can get frostbite on exposed skin in less than two minutes.

That's what, you know, the Canadian forces was, was telling their, uh, military personnel, uh, you know, I think at the time I described it, like the troops are, you know, they have at the time I described it, like the troops are, you know, they have goggles face masks. They look like extra extras from the empire strikes back. You know, the star wars movie, the military had to keep its trucks, you know, running around the clock to keep the engines warm. So the oil doesn't freeze and they could restart them in the morning. It's just unbelievable the, you know, the inauspicious environment that people there

live in and that the military has to operate in. And so the Canadian Arctic is 40% of Canada's territory, 75% of our coastline. But just give me a sense of who the other major Arctic players are. The Arctic region has eight countries. So you've got Canada, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Russia, the U S Finland and Greenland, which is, which is coordinated with, with Denmark. So those are, those are the Arctic countries and, uh, you countries and all these nations are in a forum called the Arctic Council. But that's what you've got involved there.

Okay. And defending this region, people will know it has come up a lot in recent weeks. Mark Kearney brought it up during the liberal leadership debate last week. How we protect our Arctic, which is under threat, not just now from the Russians and the Chinese, but from potential U.S. incursions, serious, serious issue. Conservative leader Pierre Poliev has been talking about building a new military base in Nunavut. The Canada First Plan of the Conservative government will build Canada's first permanent Arctic military base since the Cold War. It will be CFB at Calais right here in this community.

Steve Bannon, a longtime Trump adviser, recently said that the next geopolitical battle will be fought over Canada's Arctic. Canada's greatest defense is about to become your softest underbelly. The north of Canada, that open border with whatever climate changes, but the beginning of the Northwest Passage, but more importantly, China and Russia, the great powers and the United States, fighting it out over the Arctic with the vast resources of the Arctic is going to be the new great game of the 21st century Canada You are thrust into the middle of that and quite frankly

Why is the Arctic so important geopolitically and economically historically and then so much so right now? so historically Canada in the US had an interest in the Arctic because during the Cold War The Arctic was that's where Russian missiles were going to be flying over, coming at the United States and Canada. The reaction at the time was to set up radar installations to monitor that. Now, in modern times,

we've got climate change obviously happening and what that is doing is exposing parts of the region that the resources can be extrapolated from there. different minerals, oil, gas, the potential is unlimited. And with the climate change, reducing the ice cover, you're gonna get, that's why you have this big interest from all these nations. Right, and there's also the Northwest Passage, right? And there's this expectation that it will become a main artery of trade. Can you talk to me a little bit about that?

Yeah. So as the temperatures heat up and the ice pack starts reduced, you get the Northwest Passage, which has got its potential. It's a shorter shipping route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. So you'll be able to save or companies will be able to save time for commercial vessels and such. So that's the interest there and opening up new trade routes. Now, the Canadian government classifies, you know, the waters of the Northwest Passage as being internal waters of Canada. But that isn't recognized by other nations such as the United States.

So we've talked about why countries would be interested in this region. Just to be really clear here, what is the fear here from Canada's perspective? So the fear from the Canadian's perspective is if we don't assert our sovereignty in this region, then you're going to get different countries operating in what we consider our region so you can have the chinese operating fishing mineral extraction so for instance in late january twenty eighteen china's government released its official Arctic strategy. Now China acknowledges it's not an Arctic nation. It calls itself a near Arctic nation. But what they want to do in the future is spend up to a trillion dollars to develop the polar regions economically. And so they're after oil, gas, mineral resources, as well as the trade routes. So, you know, that's where this interest is coming from. And that's what Canada is concerned about. Right. I remember in the final weeks,

the Biden administration warned that China sees the area as a new crossroads of the world. Last year, the Pentagon released this new Arctic strategy that highlighted the risk of China and Russia teaming up together, right? And then of course now, there's reporting that the US and Russia are discussing cooperation in that region. I wonder if you could talk to me a little bit more about that.

Yeah, so this is coming from the Trump administration, which has turned the so-called rules-based world order on its upside down. And so they're saying that they want to talk to Russia about developing the region economically and you know other countries such as Canada aren't part of that mix. And so that's the concern there, particularly what we've seen from, uh, the Trump administration, uh, hitting us economically and all the other talk. And I know people have talked about this as potentially part of this larger Trump strategy to do like a reverse Nixon, uh, to peel Russia away from China. We have all these people saying that we need to do more

to put a presence in the region to try and protect our sovereignty. What do we have there right now? What does it look like right now? So we have a Joint Task Force North, which is based in Yellowknife, or the headquarters in Yellowknife. And we've got the Canadian Rangers. They operate in around 200 remote and isolated communities in the North and in the Arctic.

And there's about 5000 Rangers. Many of them are indigenous. And so it's broken down into different patrols and there's 1700 about in the Arctic region. So when I was in the North, you had the Canadian Rangers training the Canadian soldiers on how to survive, how to navigate on the land. And so they're very critical component to our military and our sovereignty presence. You know, we have about 300 full-time military personnel, you know, largely based in Yellow Knife.

We have installations in Cambridge Bay, you know, Resolute. We've got radar facilities that type of thing and so what is that all amount to is that a lot or? It's I mean considering considering the read the size of the region It's not You know, and this is the this is the ongoing issue that we're dealing with, you know, but it's again, it's difficult to operate up there. And secondly, it's very sparse. So Nunavut is 2 million square kilometers and it's got a population of only 40,000. So and then there's almost no infrastructure and so that's what you're dealing with.

In Scarborough, there's this fire behind our eyes. A passion in our bellies. It's in the hearts of our neighbors. The eyes of our nurses. And the hands of our doctors. It's what makes Scarborough, Scarborough. In our hospitals, we do more than anyone thought possible. We flesh when anyone could imagine.

But it's time to imagine what we can do with more. Join Scarborough Health Network and together, we can turn grit into greatness. Do need at lovescabrew.ca. The TikTok Juno Band Choice Award is back. Who's Canada's favorite artist? You decide to vote search Junos on TikTok. The winner will be revealed at the Junos hosted by Michael Buble. Live March 30th at 8 Eastern on CBC and CBC Gym.

Quebec Premier Francois Legault wrote the Prime Minister and he said that given the current geopolitical context, the federal government should invest more in polar max icebreakers. They are these massive ships that the Coast Guard needs to, I guess, defend the Arctic. And I believe that they're built built or can be built in Quebec. Um, and just what is the need like for, for new icebreakers?

How important are they? Um, what's the fleet like now? I know that the auditor, auditor general raised concerns about, about an aging fleet back in 2022. Yeah. So the Canadian Coast Guard, they are one of the main presence for our country in the Arctic and they use that obviously

through their ice breaking fleet. And as you mentioned, the ice breaking fleet of the Canadian Coast Guard is aging, it's limited, there's not enough ships. Now the government has said it's going to build two icebreakers, one at Davie which is in Quebec and that's what the Quebec Premier is talking about and the other is at C-SPAN Vancouver Shipyards. So that's the plan but this plan plan has been chugging along.

Nothing has been built yet, and they don't even have a procurement strategy per se. So we don't know, you know, they're doing the design work on these two polar icebreakers, but there's no exact schedule for building, and there's no estimated cost. That still has to be negotiated during contract negotiation. So there's a lot of talk.

Um, and the Quebec premier is adding to that talk, but there's doesn't seem to be a lot of action. Right. Timeline isn't exactly to our advantage here, right? Given. Correct. And, and the other problem is, is it's the, it's the limitations of the shipbuilding industry in this country. They can only work so fast. They only have so many employees,

so many skilled laborers. You know, some people have suggested go overseas and, and, and buy some, buy some icebreakers from, from other nations. They can be built there built there, but Canada hasn't been doing that. What about submarines? So the submarine issue has always been problematic. So in the late 1980s, you know, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney came up with his defense white paper, Canada was going to acquire a fleet of nuclear powered submarines. That is what you really need to operate under the ice in the Arctic. Well that program eventually collapsed.

The Americans weren't keen on giving us the technology and the money issue was significant. We are operating diesel electric submarines now which we got from Britain used and they're very limited in what they can do in the Arctic. The problem being is you know nuclear can stay under the ice indefinitely whereas conventional submarines like we have have to resurface and replenish their batteries and air and that type of thing. And you can't do that under, you know, when the ice pack is so solid. David, I remember conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper talked often about the Arctic. Back in 2008, he was saying that the geopolitical importance of the Arctic and Canada's interest

in it have never been greater, not to put words in the former prime minister's mouth, but I would imagine that he would say today it's even greater than that. What did he actually get done? And I suppose the follow-up question to that is, why does it seem like this region hasn't been more of a priority? Mr. Harper launched a number of programs. So he was going to develop a deep water port, refueling installation for the Royal Canadian Navy.

He originally said he would have a fleet of armed icebreakers, which never came about and then they moved to this Arctic and offshore patrol ships, which they're being built. There's a number of them in the water, but they have limited ability to operate in the Arctic. They're great for the summer, but they have limited ice breaking capability. You know, there was talk about new icebreakers

that didn't really materialize. He did expand Canadian Rangers. So there's been some improvements there the Refueling installation which he which was announced in 2007 It's still not open. I had an article recently That DND the Department of National Defense can't't tell me when it's going to open.

And what had happened is the Harper government had to scale back. They were cutting defense budget and they scaled back on that project. So now it's an unheated shed with a couple of fuel tanks, whereas before it was going to have its own airfield, have heated fuel tanks, which could, you know, you could operate year round. Now it can only operate in the summer when it will be open. And who knows when that will happen. As we've talked about, we're hearing all of these politicians now say that we really need to ramp up in the Arctic.

Poliev wants to see a new base in Iqaluit. Mark Kearney talked about two bases. But look, even if we did that, right? How would that be enough to counter the likes of China, Russia, and now an increasingly unreliable ally in the United States? Yeah, the problem is the government, both conservative and liberal, uh, seem to, and the military, uh, seem to operate, um, slowly.

So you get like, for instance, as Naval installation, uh, announced with great fanfare in 2007 and here we are in 2025 and it's still not open. There are problems, you know, building infrastructure there is very difficult and very expensive so you have to have government who is really committed to this initiative. You know, some people are saying the flip side is you don't need the military expansion. Your sovereignty is represented by the people that live there, the Canadians that live there. And if you see, you know, some of the news coming out from the communities there, they point out that they're not very well supported by the Canadian government.

You know, even just basic drinking water is a problem. And so, you know, there's a school of thought that say let's start building up infrastructure there for Canadians, fellow Canadians, let's really start that. And you can do the military stuff as well. But, you know, that should be the first, the main emphasis. Right, because it would be much harder for another country to claim land as their own when there are people on it. Exactly. Exactly. So as opposed to just having a military patrol kind of go through, you know, once a year or twice a year. I know Canada's foreign minister, Melanie Jolie, has said that NATO has to play a bigger role also in the protection of the Arctic.

China and Russia are working together and there is now military cooperation and exercises happening in the Arctic and we need to do more. What role could NATO have in protecting Canada's Arctic and can we count on it? Again, especially since we increasingly are not able to count on the U.S. as a stable partner. Yeah I don't know about the NATO angle and if you take a look at NATO membership you know you have like Norway for instance and Sweden new NATO member so they know how to operate in the Arctic. The United States NATO member which is as you point out is increasingly problematic and what support we can get from them.

I mean, they come to Canada for military training on how to operate in the North. So, you know, I don't know if we can count on, you know, NATO countries like, I don't know, Greece to help us out in the North. I mean, we are the Arctic specialists. And so we know how to operate in our own territory. I think NATO's role would be, would be limited. Again, to bring up Stephen Harper. I remember when he talked about the Arctic, he would use the term, use it or lose it, I guess, use our sovereignty or lose it.

Protecting national sovereignty, the integrity of our borders, is the first and foremost responsibility of a national government. I wonder, to end this conversation today, if you could ruminate or expand a bit more on that idea, like what could happen if we don't use it? Sure. Mr. Harper did use that term and I think I was covering the Arctic and offshore patrol ship launch when he did use that term. And he has used that term repeatedly during his time. And it is a good term. If we don't use the Arctic, if we don't have our presence there, someone else is going to be there. And the Chinese are focusing, you know, $1 dollars for development the Americans are interested the Russians obviously are interested they've expanded installations

and such everybody's interested so if we are not there someone is going to be in our territory or what we claim to be our territory and that we do not have a presence in. Okay. David, this was great. Thank you very much. Sure, no problem. All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening.

Talk to you tomorrow.